


Absolute

by haylznoel



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: I'm Sorry, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 07:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8436568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haylznoel/pseuds/haylznoel
Summary: To spare the lives of his compatriots, Enjolras offers himself up for execution. Instead of a slaughter that claims the lives of all the amis, the cold dawn light falls upon his final moments alone on the gallows.





	

It’s a foggy grey morning, unseasonably chilly for the month of June, and the mist hangs cold and oppressive in the early-morning light, adding an appropriate sense of solemnity to the scene. The boards of the gallows feel solid and sturdy beneath his boots, though he knows they are anything but. A rope is placed around his neck-- tightened so he can feel the rough fibers biting into his throat-- and he accepts this with unflinching dignity.

In the end it hadn’t been a difficult decision, offering up his own life in exchange for those he’d led to their doom. When word had reached them that they were the only ones left, he had graciously offered them a way out, and stubbornly they’d all agreed to stay, to fight, to die with him in the name of the cause. But two bodies already lie, feeble and broken, on the floorboards of Le Musain, and Enjolras was not prepared to let the unfortunate siblings gain any more company in their eternal rest. 

The man who was leading the national guardsmen in their attack against the ramshackle barricade had similar concerns. While his righteous sense of patriotism roared at him to quash every last revolutionary that defiled the country he served and believed in, it was duty to his men that eventually won out. They had mothers and wives and families to return to, and to keep fighting would mean to keep taking losses, and every man that fell was a loss he acutely felt. So when the opportunity presented itself in the form of a negotiation that would quell the fighting with the loss of only one human life, he accepted the surrender with hardly a second thought.

And that was how the battle ended. Not in slaughter, but in Enjolras standing steadfast with a noose around his neck.

Courfeyrac and Grantaire stand nearby. The others are out of sight, but Enjolras knows they are somewhere close, held at bay by the national guardsmen at some distance and watching in silence. Courfeyrac is bitter but resolute, and beside him Grantaire sways with eyes cast downward. Enjolras had asked that these two be close at hand to witness the execution, and his garroters had graciously obliged. But besides these two, and the others a ways off, the public square is empty. To draw a crowd in an effort to make an example of this young upstart would just be to martyr him to a public who was just as willing to wait out the revolution behind the doors they’d closed, ignorant to the war being fought on their behalf outside. 

No, his death was to be a far more intimate affair.

“Any last requests?”

He hadn’t been prepared for the offer. He rather expected them to dispatch him quickly and without consideration. 

But he does have a request. 

And without hesitation, he makes it.

“Grantaire.”

His voice nearly startles him; so hoarse, so pained, and so very, very tired. The name hangs in the air as heavily as the white morning mist, and the world seems to collectively hold its breath awaiting a response. Grantaire has gone very still, no longer swaying, his gaze fixated on the cobbles below. 

Impatient as the clock ticks down the remaining moments of his life, Enjolras clears his throat, the noose scraping over his adam’s apple, and repeats the request.

“Grantaire,” his tone is something close to pleading. And with a heavy, shuddering sigh, Grantaire obliges, and steps forward.

There are so many things left to say. Things left unsaid even long after both had resigned to their deaths on the barricade. Perhaps because neither could accept a reality in which one would survive without the other-- the reality they now face. All those unspoken words crackle pregnantly between them, and there’s not time to say all that needs to be said. The rope feels tight around Enjolras’ neck as he leans in toward Grantaire.

They share one final kiss, chaste and brief and not nearly enough of a goodbye for either of them. Enjolras aches to reach out and take Grantaire’s hand, but his are bound. They part, and stare hard at one another for a few heartbeats, trying to communicate with their eyes all the things that they will never have time to say out loud, the rest of the cold world barely registering in their periphery. 

“I love you,” Grantaire says, his voice breaking.

Enjolras has to collect himself before he can respond.

“I love you, too.”

With watery, red-rimmed eyes, Grantaire reluctantly retreats back into place beside Courfeyrac. With his final request fulfilled, the executioner prepares for the final stroke.

But before the ground can be knocked out from under him, Enjolras takes a step forward. 

One sure, deliberate step over the edge into empty air. 

A short, sudden drop-- a snap-- and it’s all over mercifully quickly. 

The silence that follows is absolute.

They cut him down after a few minutes. Carefully they lay him out on the pavement. His head lolls at an unnatural angle, and his wide glassy eyes stare, unseeing, skyward.

The others are allowed to come forward and pay their respects. They all circle around the body, shaking and nearly crumbling beneath the weight of the sacrifice made on their behalf. Someone stoops to straighten his head and close his eyes. Then, for a long time, they stand side-by-side and mutter about what to do next. Boys who hours ago had been ready to die, now unsure what to do with the lives stretched long and foreboding ahead of them. Some talk of keeping the faith, others of giving up and going home. Grantaire swears in a caustic whisper that he is leaving the country. Heading West. But no one is really listening.

Gradually they wander off, alone or in pairs. Their freedom has been assured at a heavy price, and they are at liberty to disappear into a city that will never appear the same to them. It is Grantaire who waits the longest, lingering with the dead boy in the street until someone arrives and carries him away, presumably back to the home of estranged family, where in the coming weeks, the funeral will be held, if the wayward son is not quietly and unceremoniously interred.

And still Grantaire waits for some time, staring at an empty spot in the street where his Apollo was so untimely stricken. He’s not sure if it’s the liquor or something else that is making his knees unsteady. But eventually he too is forced to walk away, into the light of a day he didn’t intend to live to see.


End file.
